The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1887-04-21
BILL ARPs LETTER,
In Which he Deals In Facts and Figures.

1t seems very strange that young men
| who come from good stock and have
been brought up with proper ideas OF
the proprieties of life shoulds eek to tight
| duel. wonder where they get such a
foolish idea of honor. Itused to prev il,
1 know, but we thought that modern
civilization had about wiped out that
stain-that stigma upon our humanity
that Sancho Panzo sentiment that would
fight a windmill because it turned.
The question that concerns society is,
how do young men acquire such notions ?
Of course they do not acquire them at
home, for I do not suppose there is q
respectable parent in the State who
would teach his son that it was right
under any circumstances to send or
accept challenge. Duelling has had its
day and is now under the ban. Ben Hill
gave its hideous corpse the last kick in
his memorable reply to Alex. Stephens,
and he deserved a monument for that If
for nothing else.
But when college boys run of to fight
duel, it is damaging reflection on that
institution and upon our system of edu-
cation. There is already suspicion
pervading the public mind, that college
course is risk, peril, a hazard and l
have heard many reflective father say !:
"I am afraid to send my boy to college !"
So many of the graduates return homo
with bad habits or bad principles or
exalted self esteem or chronic Incidence
that parents are discouraged and disap.
pointed. If the boys come home as the
family ornaments, they soon become the
family expense. Their Incidence is
established and they are drones in the
hive. They read all the modern novels
and can talk critically and learnedly, but
they are of no account. They are capa-
BILE but there is nothing for them to do
that corresponds with their mental
culture and physical reluctance to work.
They will not go back to the farm or the
workshop and the professions are already
oyercrowded. Ofcourse there are many
bright and honorable exceptions, but our
people are taking notice that, as gener-
al rule, the successful men of the day
are not college graduates and those u ho
are the sons of poor parents. A boy who
never did any work at home is in bad
fix to go to college. Work is the thing
habit of work-chop the wood, make
the fires, feed the stock, plant the garden
and cultivate it; help all around and
about the house and black his own
shoes use the hammer and the saw,
mend the broken chairs and bring water,
do something that will save expense and
that will help-help:is the word. Every
child should be taught to help, that it is q
duty to help. When the boy has been
raised this way and is ready for college
send him for one year, and if he is get
ting too uppity and biggoty then let him
stay at home year and work some more
and then send him back again. he can
just drop back to the next class and lose
nothing. But if you send boy to COL
lege who never worked at home, and let
him stay three or four years, in nine
cases out Of ten he will be no account.
He is finished gentleman.
The perils of education are alarming.
l mean education without moral and
industrial training. Teachers and pro-
fessors have but little to do with this.
Their sole business is to teach from the
books. 1.-THE pupil stands veil in math.
ematics, in Greek and Latin and logic
and rhetoric and philosophy, he is doing
splendid. That is the big thing. In
fact, it is everything SO far as the teacher
is concerned; and almost everything
with the parents. The result is that
thousands of boys are being educated as
experts in Incidence, in avoiding work,
and in many cases they resort to forgery
and embezzlement and obtaining money
under false pretences. 1t is now an open
secret at the North that education
increases crime, not just a little but
immensely. As illiteracy decreases
crime increases in geometrical ratio.
They are almost met with the startling
question which is the best, comparative
ignorance with honesty or high culture
with dishonesty?
Let us look at the figures as furnished
by Mr.. George R. Stetson, of Boston, a
philosopher, thinker, patriot. In
1850 there were, in round numbers, one
million Of people in Massachusetts and
1926 prisoners prisoner to SO4 of the
population. AS education progressed
crime progressed. Education walked
and crime ran-until in 1884 there
were (65,OO0) sixty.ive thousand
arrests, or one arrest for every
20 of the population and assuming that
FIVE persons constitute family, we have
the alarming result of one arrest to every
six families in the State. The criminals
in the house of correction of Hampden
County increased from 1863 to 1,131 in
less than twenty years. The population
increased only 100 per cent while crime
increased 312 In the last five years it
increased 96 per cent, and the sheriff in
his report says this condition will proba.
bly, continue.
Continue how long, I wonder. Will it
be until, like Sodom and Gomorrah,
there be sot ten righteous men lett? Fn
1883, there were 1,100 commitments
more than 1882. Mr.. Stetson shows that
in this rapid increase of crime the native
population is just as bad as the foreign
Then, again, look at the Divorces
class of statistics from which the foreign
element ia eliminated. In 1863 there